Unable to Get Paid Before the New Year, Wage Seekers Would Rather Perish Together

The boss has owed wages for half a year, and angry workers smashed vehicles to vent their rage. (Video screenshot)

[People News] In China, collective wage protests are a common phenomenon, especially before the Lunar New Year, when even more people demand their pay because they are waiting to return home for the holidays. However, the entire country remains mired in economic recession. Coupled with the government’s widespread practice of defaulting on construction payments, neither migrant workers seeking wages nor business owners being chased by creditors are having an easy time.

Multiple videos circulating on the X platform show that wage protest incidents have recently erupted one after another in many cities across Guangdong, Fujian, Hubei, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Henan, Jiangxi, and Guizhou provinces.

Online sources reveal that on February 11 alone, wage protests occurred in many cities, including Henan, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Jiangxi, Shandong, and Guangdong.

On February 11, in Guancheng Hui District, Zhengzhou City, Henan Province, workers blocked the entrance of the Jiatian Future New City sales centre to demand unpaid wages. According to the workers: “We guarded the ‘guaranteed housing delivery’ project—when will someone guard our wages? Because of your promise, we worked day and night. At the end of the year, you just dismiss us by saying there’s no money.”

That same day in Xuanhan County, Dazhou City, Sichuan Province, workers blocked a highway to defend their rights because wages for the Enguang Expressway Shabawan reconstruction project had been in arrears. On the same day, in Jiulidi, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, workers blocked the gate of China Railway No. 8 Bureau Group to demand their unpaid wages.

Also on February 11, in Weinan, Shaanxi Province, nearly one hundred sanitation workers sat inside the local labour bureau demanding wages. The video uploader said their monthly salary was only 1,800 yuan.

Many other wage protest incidents cannot be listed here one by one.

In fact, many of the engineering contractors and labour subcontractors being chased by workers are also suffering. They borrowed money from banks and worked hard to complete the projects, but can only pay workers after receiving the final construction payments from the commissioning parties. However, those who withhold the final payments are often CCP government departments or entities backed by the government. They know that the contractors can no longer afford to pay workers, yet they ignore the problem. It is possible that the remaining project funds have already been divided up by corrupt officials.

In Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, a Rongqi Group construction project long refused to pay engineering fees and workers’ wages. After repeated failed attempts by the subcontractor to collect payment, and with some workers unable to afford travel home, one subcontractor left a final message and then set himself on fire.

Some workers play CCP propaganda “red songs” while demanding wages; some even kneel in front of government offices or CCP officials, but none of it works.

In response, one netizen said: “Why is it always you who gets bullied and hurt? The Communist Party dictatorship doesn’t treat you as a human being, yet you still thank it?”

Another said: “Your suffering, disasters, and despair are exactly what the Communist Party’s dictatorship and its so-called rule of law have brought you!”

One netizen pointed out: “Why does China have unfinished housing scams every day, bank fraud, financial fraud, corporate collapses, frozen deposits that are misappropriated, forced unpaid overtime, wage arrears, food safety disasters, forced demolitions, land and money grabs, a dark judiciary, blocked rights protection, suppression of free speech, manipulation of news media, and petitioners being followed, monitored, and violently persecuted by the Communist Party? Haven’t Chinese people realised there is something wrong with this country? Don’t they see how evil the Communist Party is?”

Another commenter added: “Anyone with basic common sense knows that all social problems and most injustice, suffering, disasters, despair, corruption, and darkness stem from the CCP’s диктатура (dictatorial) system. The Communist Party has always monopolised power and exploited people like slaves, constantly infringing on their human rights, life, and property. Yet you don’t even know who is bullying you.”

In the past, many workers who failed to obtain their wages and could not afford to return home ended their own lives in anger and despair. Now, however, many workers have realised that demanding wages is not wrong. In their fury, they destroy the projects they built or topple equipment worth hundreds of thousands of yuan. Some use excavators to smash entire rows of large trucks.

Some say they are foolish, but for them, the wages earned through day-and-night labour are meant to pay for their children’s school fees and their parents’ medical bills. When dignity and survival are trampled underfoot, releasing their “mutually destructive” anger becomes their last—and most tragic—form of resistance.

It is the CCP’s brutal rule that has pushed the world’s most obedient, hardworking, and compliant people into confrontation with the government, turning them into the gravediggers of the Communist Party.

(First published by People News) △